ajhlovestheatre

THE JOURNEY TO VENICE

by Bjørg Vik

translated by Janet Garton

Directed by Wiebke Green

Finborough Theatre, London – until 25 March 2023

https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/the-journey-to-venice/

Almost more moving than the depiction of a very old married couple eking out a existence in genteel poverty, which takes up most of this award-winning Norwegian play, is the small act of kindness that briefly transforms the lives of Edith and Oscar at the very end of Bjørg Vik’s quietly devastating study. In Janet Garton’s elegant translation, matched by Wiebke Green’s delicate but unsparing direction, Vik’s 1992 play emerges as a melancholic yet comical contemplation on the vicissitudes and challenges of decades long relationships, and the half truths and fantasies humans treat themselves to in order to make difficult lives bearable.

When we first encounter the Tellmans on Kit Hinchcliffe’s realistically homely but rundown set, starkly appointed and lit, they seem like a pair of amiably off-the-wall former academics, she spritely, he almost blind. They are worldly, witty, with a welter of mutual affection and minor grievances. Annabel Leventon and Tim Hardy invest them with so much detail and warmth that it’s hard to believe they’re not married in real life. Slowly the realisation dawns that they are living in the most financially straitened of circumstances, something Leventon’s luminous, troubled Edith is doing her best to keep from Hardy’s endearing Oscar, who is already plagued with guilt at not being able to give his wife the retirement she deserves, that the bills are piling up and she’s started selling off artworks and books to make money.

Almost more touching still, is the fact that this eccentric couple periodically go off on “journeys” without leaving home, whereby they run cinefilms of global locations visited when younger, while eating food from such places and wearing makeshift costumes. It’s a little bit of light in otherwise pretty dark existences. The play’s title derives from one such travelogue, where tensions and petty jealousies within their relationship are laid bare.

There are shades of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf in the subplot of a lost child, except that where Albee is mostly bile and bitterness, Vik is a deep well of sadness. When young plumber Christopher arrives (Nathan Welsh, utterly adorable) to sort out some domestic maintenance, Edith alights on him as a possible yet unattainable child substitute, and he finds himself at first unwillingly, but then with charmed enthusiasm, drawn into their gentle fantasy world. The contrast of Christopher’s straightforward, laddish bonhomie with the neediness of the Tellmans is heartbreaking, and it is he who, in the play’s final moments, throws some much needed joy, or at least relief, into their lives, but in a completely practical way. It’s a lovely, tear-inducing moment.

More light is provided by the arrival of a new home help (Charlotte Beaumont, winningly gauche) who bursts in like a cyclone of good intentions and sheer physical clumsiness. The balance between bleakness and little chinks of comfort is exquisitely managed throughout.

Ultimately, this is a deeply depressing play on many levels, but it is a quietly powerful one, suffused with an aching longing for better years gone by. Furthermore, for all its unflinching honesty about the difficulties of getting older, it has an innate belief in the fundamental kindness within flawed humans, and that is something to celebrate and savour. Green’s production packs a lot into seventy five minutes, almost more than can be taken in during such a short duration, but it is a feast of fine acting. Brief but with a lingering aftertaste.

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF MUSICAL

Book and lyrics by Jake Brunger

Music and lyrics by Pippa Cleary

Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh

Noël Coward Theatre, London – until 13 May 2023

https://bakeoffthemusical.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIxr-_vPLK_QIVD7btCh1hWAsUEAAYASAAEgJ1gvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

This does exactly what it says on the cake tin. A joyful confection and, like the universally adored TV show that inspired it, a bona fide crowdpleaser. If it’s a little rough around the edges as a musical (and anybody who caught last years brief tryout in Cheltenham may be surprised at how little has changed), it’s still a thoroughly lovely way to spend a couple of hours in the theatre.

Creators Jake Brunger and Pippa Cleary have already proved, with their razor-sharp Adrian Mole musical at Leicester, the Menier and in the West End a couple of years back, that they have an unusual ability to apply Broadway-style chutzpah and confidence to a uniquely British story and themes. Their tuneful score for The Great British Bake Off Musical has a commendable swagger and ambition: there are patter songs, power ballads, raps, rousing chorales and upbeat numbers that bring the house down. If Six’s Marlow and Moss’s work so far seems aimed more at the pop market, Brunger and Cleary’s is innately theatrical.

I assume it’s deliberate that the style, musical structure and chord sequences of blockbusters such as Hamilton and Wicked sometimes hang heavily and incongruously over this score, but the weaving-in of Tom Howe’s TV music is ingeniously done. Brunger and Cleary’s incisive, witty lyrics ensure that this show has it’s own unique, tart flavour. It’s unashamedly sentimental at times, but also pretty hard to resist.

Rachel Kavanaugh’s attractive staging, seasoned with simple but entrancing choreography by Georgina Lamb, finds that sweet spot where it simultaneously sends up the TV show that inspired it, while also paying an affectionate homage. The physical production is basic but colourful – sets, costumes and cakes (!) designed by Alice Power, lighting by Ben Cracknell, admirably clear sound by Ben Harrison – but with a cast this good that’s pretty much all that’s needed.

Structurally it’s nearer to a revue than a traditional musical, perhaps inevitably given that it has to encompass an octet of contestants, a pair of presenters (Scott Paige and Zoe Birkett, both fabulous) plus two judges (John Owen Jones gleefully capturing serving up essence of Paul Hollywood, now joined by a hilariously haughty Haydn Gwynne as Prue Leith stand-in, Dame Pam Lee, who gets a glittery full production number to open the second half), and, for a show based upon a TV series rather than a single story, I’m not sure one can ask for much more than that. Not every gag lands (a ponderous opening number that sees Birkett and Paige got up as cave people discovering the origins of cake is a real headscratcher and a couple of running jokes feel belaboured), and the tonal shifts between hilarity and heartbreak could be slicker and subtler. There are perhaps rather too many songs, though most of them are smashing.

There is a sliver of plot involving Damian Humbley’s sweet widower and Charlotte Wakefield’s self-effacing full-time carer from Blackpool, the conclusion of which one can see coming a mile off, but it’s sold with so much charm, as well as sensational vocals, by these two fine performers that it is impossible not to care. Humbley in particular, already very good last year, has now developed his study in selfless grief into a finely wrought portrayal.

The entire cast is terrific. Cat Sandison delicately convinces as an Italian baker who has substituted cake making for the children she can’t have, Aharon Rayner is impressive and multi-layered as streetwise but lovable Hassan, unsure of how much of hIs Syrian heritage he can bring to the TV screen. Jay Saighal nails the swagger and fragile masculinity of a toe-curling hipster and Grace Mouat is a lot of fun as a ragingly ambitious spoilt princess. Michael Cahill sparkles as camply stylish but sensitive Russell.

Claire Moore, one of the most astonishing musical talents of her generation, initially seems a tad underused as sassy, thrice-married Eastender Babs but then gets an explosive act two number, pitched half way between Music Hall and Broadway showstopper, that finally justifies such luxury casting. It’s a rollicking, full-throated ode to unrequited love, and Moore’s barnstorming rendition of it – hilarious, deeply touching and vocally enthralling – is the stuff theatregoers memories are made of. It may be extraneous to the plot, such as it is, but it’s worth the ticket price all by itself. If there’s a problem with it, it’s that it’s such a great number, and put over with such star power, that it slightly takes the shine off what I think is supposed to be the real eleven o’clock number, the soaring and melodic Wicked-esque power ballad ‘Rise’. Wakefield performs it thrillingly but it just feels too soon after Ms Moore has all but ripped the roof off the theatre.

Despite some minor quibbles, this is the theatrical equivalent of the finest baked goods: fresh yet comfortingly familiar, warm, a bit messy but a feast of fun. It’s life-affirming big heartedness, unashamedly British revelry in puns and double entrendres, and sugary familiarity may just be the nourishment we all need right now. I smell a big fat hit.

SLEEPOVA

by Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini

directed by Jade Lewis

Bush Theatre London – until 8 April 2023

https://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/event/sleepova/

In the week which saw the Bush Theatre pick up two out of a possible five nominations in the Outstanding Achievement in an Affiliate Theatre award category in this years Oliviers, the excellent West London venue has further cause for celebration with the opening of this sassy delight. As refreshing and spicy as an ice cold ginger beer on a sunny day, and as warm and lovely as a hug from a treasured friend, Matilda Feyiṣayọ Ibini’s irresistible sugar rush of a play already looks like a strong contender for feelgood show of 2023. It’s a study of female friendships among four Black East Londoners in their late teens turning into early adulthood. It’s suffused with authenticity, affection, and irrepressible humour…and the dialogue is terrific.

Every performance during its run is designated a relaxed one, and Jade Lewis’s rambunctiously enjoyable production is such a party that, for much of it, watching in total silence wouldn’t even feel appropriate. That said, at least on press night, the spell woven by script, staging and above all the quartet of fabulous performers, is such that it means that when Ibini’s script turns serious and demands more thoughtful attention, the entire audience is utterly riveted, engrossed into silence. You find yourself caring very deeply about these four young women pretty much from the get-go.

Sleepova opens with Shan (Aliyah Odoffin) preparing to host an overnight party to celebrate her sixteenth birthday, with her best friends: there’s devoutly Christian Elle (Shayde Sinclair), mouthy gay mixed race Rey (Amber Grappy), constantly financially manipulating her hapless offstage stepmum, and super-smart, endlessly horny Funmi (BAFTA Rising Star Bukky Bakray, proving she’s every bit as wonderful on stage as she is on screen). Odoffin’s Shan is an open-faced gem: witty but innately nice, with a vulnerability borne of having the shadow of inherited Sickle Cell Disease looming heavy over her young life.

One of the many marvellous things about Ibini’s writing is that it acknowledges the seriousness of this, and several later situations, but never devolves into sentimentality: these young women are too vital and brilliant for that, joyfully, noisily, looking to find and take their places in the world. Nary a morsel of dialogue or a funny line (of which there are so so many) rings false, and the love, support and occasional sharpness between them convinces entirely. If there is a small issue, it’s that, particularly in the first scene, some of the dialogue is delivered so naturally, thrown away almost, that it’s not always possible to hear.

Structurally, the piece is episodic as the characters talk about their parents, about boys, about their long term prospects, and how their cultures and heritages (variously, Nigerian, Jamaican, Grenadian…) impact on their modern London lives. They bicker, support each other, share confidences – the overall effect is of eaves-dropping on some unusually entertaining conversations – and, in a particularly fun sequence, we get to see them going to their final school prom (“we’re moving closer to becoming our real selves, fulfilling our potential. We get to set the agenda now”) and really partying it up: it’s a gorgeous button on a tumultuously good first half.

The second half is more serious and genuinely very touching, but proves marginally less successful and satisfying as big themes are batted about -bereavement, a sudden health emergency, the reaction to homosexuality in a religious family- then resolved a little too quickly in order to get the play to its finish. The biggest casualty of all this is the deeply disturbing subject of gay conversion therapy, a topic that is well documented in the USA but much less talked about here. Ibini has created a potent, heartrending scene between Grappy’s compellingly feisty Rey and Sinclair’s steadfast but conflicted Elle, but then all but abandons this compelling, troubling strand of the story: it’s a little frustrating. On a side note, these two performers are making astonishingly fine professional stage debuts here.

The play concludes with an uplifting scene which sees the four women putting together and burying a “time capsule” of beloved objects, while speechifying about their future hopes and dreams. It may be a bit of a trope but it’s leavened with the humour with which Ibini excels, and carries authentic emotional weight. Ultimately, this feels like a very “young” play, and that is not a criticism. It’s full of heart, hope and wonder, and it’s a privilege to watch a quartet of upcoming acting stars at close quarters (though the gloriously droll Ms Bakray is already well on her way to stardom). This is ensemble playing of the highest order. Truly life-enhancing stuff, and a female driven riposte to the universally acclaimed, West End-bound For Black Boys…, it deserves a similar level of success. One to love.

BOOTYCANDY

by Robert O’Hara

Directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu

Gate Theatre London – until 11 March 2023

https://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/bootycandy/

Receiving its UK premiere nine years after bursting onto the off-Broadway theatre scene, Robert O’Hara’s multi-faceted, zesty, fierce chefs kiss of a play bowls in like the cheeky elder sibling of Michael R Jackson’s Pulitzer and Tony winning A Strange Loop and this Broadway season’s succès d’estime Ain’t No Mo’. All three pieces in turn owe a debt of gratitude to, and can trace a throughline back to, George C Wolfe’s 1986 The Colored Museum, which was epoch-making in its depiction of what it means to be Black in contemporary America. All four shows are essentially ambitious collages rather than traditional plays, and make their potent points with rollicking good humour, vibrant theatricality and moments of shock engineered explicitly to discomfort and wrongfoot their audiences.

O’Hara’s text, in common with Jackson’s masterpiece, also explores, with fabulous flamboyance, bracing intelligence and a willingness to chart dangerous waters, the intersection between being Black and gay. The result is something fiery, troubling, wildly entertaining, and occasionally impenetrable. If Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s high-spirited staging initially seems to be intent on keeping us at one remove from the text by specifying neither the locations nor the scene titles the playwright provides (“Drinks And Desire”, “Conference”, “Ceremony”), and filling the open playing space with designer Milla Clarke’s vast, unadorned platform through, upon and around which, the variety of characters burst, sparkle and slay (the original production had multiple detailed sets), this abstract “less is more” approach eventually pays off.

For a start, the deliberate lack of specificity forces us to engage and listen, although that’s not easy at first: the acoustics of the Gate’s new Camden home aren’t the best, rendering significant portions of early parts of the show at best sixty percent intelligible, at least from where I was sitting. More importantly, it encourages the audience to use their imagination to fill in the blanks, and that, in tandem with bold performance choices, constant breaking of boundaries between cast and audience, and O’Hara’s extraordinary writing, freebasing between cerebral and outrageous, is where Bootycandy acquires its genuine power and specialness. If you don’t know what the title means, well…just you wait.

In a stroke of satirical brilliance, O’Hara binds together the bewilderingly disparate strands of the first half into a Black writers workshop, presided over by a blithely insensitive white moderator (“I’m wondering what you are hoping the audience comes away with after seeing your work?”), where it appears that everything we’ve so far seen has come from the pens of these people. It’s an intriguing, illuminating conceit that brings us up short.

Mainly though, Bootycandy is a splintered, meta-theatrical trawl, part celebratory, often brutal, through a variety of life experiences for Sutter, a Black gay Candide-like figure, seen in a variety of states and situations, ranging from questioning child to opinionated writer to sexual adventurer, that interrogate his place in the world and the way that this world perceives him. Prince Kundai, in a hauntingly impressive London stage debut, acutely charts Sutter’s progress from wide eyed innocence to hurt, rage, cynicism…it’s a hell of a role and it gets a hell of a performance. Kundai nails the comedy and the pain, and unflinchingly conveys Sutter’s dangerous edge alongside his cuddlier side, but is also unafraid to make the character fascinatingly unknowable when required. He’s a star in the making.

Just as inspired is Luke Wilson in a variety of roles, but especially joyous as a preacher whose audience-baiting sermon explodes in a riot of unexpected camp, and deeply touching as Sutter’s potty-mouthed and surprisingly switched-on Grandma. He’s worth the ticket price by himself. Roly Botha emerges as a thrilling shapeshifter, funny and chilling, and DK Fashola is a firecracker presence in a variety of roles, but nowhere better than as a mouthy, spicy maternal figure who attempts to shame Sutter into “manning up” in a scene that starts out as lethally funny but ends up just being lethal. At the performance I saw, assistant director Tatenda Shamiso was on with the script in place of an indisposed Bimpo Pachéco and was utterly fabulous, barely glancing at the script and matching the bravura of the other performances.

Exhilaratingly original and pleasingly ambitious in scope and execution, this is the theatrical equivalent to having a bucket of cold water thrown over you: it takes you out of your comfort zone, it’s refreshing, a bit shocking and might leave you trembling. Enthusiastically recommended, this Bootycandy is sweet and salty.

STANDING AT THE SKYS EDGE

Book by Chris Bush

Music and Lyrics by Richard Hawley

Directed by Robert Hastie

National Theatre/Olivier – until 25 March 2023

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/standing-at-the-skys-edge/

After rave reviews from the original run at the Crucible Theatre, and overwhelmingly positive word of mouth here in London, I assumed I was going to love Standing At The Skys Edge, but Holy Sheffield, I didn’t expect it to be THIS good. A diverse cast on stage at arguably the most prestigious theatre in the land roaring through a state-of-the-nation piece developed by one of the most well respected regional houses is exactly what we need right now. But when the results are this fine, it goes further than that: this is a cause for rapturous celebration. Once you stop sobbing, that is.

Although more sophisticated in intent and execution, Standing At The Skys Edge has the same open-hearted ebullience as audience favourite Blood Brothers and deserves to achieve a similar longevity. Chris Bush and Richard Hawley’s brilliant, heartfelt creation also recalls the inspired Conor McPherson-Bob Dylan tearfest Girl From The North Country with it’s employment of pre-existing songs to complement and comment upon a searingly effective new script.

Bush’s mastery of a trio of female-centric stories, set in the same flat on the infamous Sheffield Park Hill estate but decades apart, is enthralling. Rose and Harry (Rachael Wooding and Robert Lonsdale, both delivering career highlight work) are a young couple moving into the brand new dwelling in the 1960s, full of optimism and overjoyed at having escaped the slums. Then there’s the family of Liberian refugees who move in during the 1980s (Deborah Stanley, Baker Mukasa, both wonderful, and an astonishing Faith Omole) when the estate has become rundown and plagued with crime; the modern tranche of the story sees affluent Londoner Poppy (Alex Young) relocating to the now-redeveloped area and nursing a broken heart. In clean, intelligent strokes, with salty, realistic dialogue, refreshing humour and a brace of vivid characters, Bush’s terrific text embraces community, social change, migration and gentrification, with a bracing theatricality.

It’s ambitious but entirely successful in director Robert Hastie’s sure hands. If it’s sometimes reminiscent of soap opera, that’s only because it’s so compulsive and relatable, how much and how deeply we come to care about these characters, and the way it interweaves ongoingly relevant issues – from racism to legacy to how immigrants are treated – into personal stories of hope and despair.

There’s a running theme between the stories, which I won’t spoil here (though there is a clue from the outset in Ben Stones’s starkly imposing set design) but it carries a massive emotional wallop when the realisation dawns, and feels like the hallmark of truly great storytelling. There is a scene near the end, which refracts an exchange of dialogue from early in act one through what we have since discovered, and which is one of the most breathtakingly brutal and ingenious examples of turning a moment on its head, that I can remember, and it’s heartbreakingly played by Omole and stellar newcomer Samuel Jordan.

Hawley’s songs, some of which originated on a 2012 concept album, range from achingly lovely to real bangers. There’s a lot of light and shade, and a variety of popular music styles, but the thundering, portentous title song that opens the second half is a particularly exciting highlight.

Anybody who still subscribes to the hackneyed cliché that “real” acting seldom happens in musicals needs to see this, which features some of the finest, most truthful performances on any current stage in the capital, right across the company. Watching the sunshine drain out of Rachael Wooding’s indomitable, adorable Rose, her contended family unit decimated by the destruction of the steel industry where her husband previously flourished, is deeply painful. Wooding’s beautiful portrayal is warm, open, and, crucially, unsentimental which makes it all the more moving. The way both she and Faith Omole’s appropriately named, and equally terrific, Joy age as the story progresses is a masterclass, aided in no small measure by intelligent costume and wig design.

Alex Young is spot-on as lovelorn, conflicted Poppy, and is likeable enough to mitigate against uncharitable thoughts about “first world problems” when her story arc is juxtaposed with the others. All three women sing like absolute dreams. There isn’t a weak link in the supporting cast either, with especially invaluable, full-throated contributions from Maimuna Memon and Bobbie Little as characters whose connections to the central storylines are only revealed later in the show. Baker Mukasa carves out an unexpectedly joyous showstopper from the number he leads.

Hastie’s staging is laser sharp, negotiating the gear changes from tender family moments to rioting and much in between, with real flair. His work is augmented by Lynne Page’s hypnotic choreography, pitched halfway between dance and mime, which invests “real” people with an unusual grace and power, while remaining grounded in a gritty naturalism.

I laughed a lot, I uglycried and I couldn’t get out of my seat fast enough at the end to join in with the most spontaneous standing ovation I’ve ever seen at the National – this is captivating, vital, haunting theatre, stunningly staged and performed, and the most emotionally satisfying British musical in decades. As well as being a great show, this feels like a major mass populist cultural event and exactly the sort of thing the National Theatre was set up for. Get in there, for a genuinely life-enhancing, power-packed experience.

PHAEDRA

by Simon Stone, after Euripides, Seneca and Racine

National Theatre/Lyttelton – until 8 April 2023

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/productions/phaedra/

Ah….so this is based on all of the Phaedras (Euripides and Seneca both had versions of the story) then rather than just Racine’s Phèdre, which is what we got in the last two London outings, with Glenda Jackson then Diana Rigg, for this seamy tale of lust, gore, jealousy and quasi-incest. Got that?! A very interesting programme article will tell you the difference between the multiple takes (the National’s programmes remain the most informative and best value for money in the capital) but what audiences really need to know is that this is very much Simon Stone’s Phaedra, and he has once again done what he effected upon Lorca’s Yerma at the Young Vic then subsequently in New York in 2016-7. In other words, this is a slick, searingly modern, riff on a classic, where you may find yourself digging deep to try to find any real connection to the original text, and which, once again, offers a humdinger of a female lead role. Yerma had a jaw-dropping Billie Piper firing on all cylinders (and deservedly winning every acting prize going) and here we get Janet McTeer in an enthralling return to the London stage.

McTeer plays Helen (formerly Phaedra) a prominent member of the Shadow Cabinet, living a life of Champagne Socialist luxury with her privileged family, brought up short by the arrival of her Hippolytus, here Sofiane, the slightly wild offspring of a now-deceased Moroccan lover, and played with a compelling mixture of saturnine intensity and the unknowable by Call My Agent’s Assaad Bouab, making a striking UK theatre debut. In this day and age, I’m not sure substituting political for Royal scandal makes the play any more shocking or relevant, but Stone’s expletive-packed, often ribaldly funny new text still makes for compulsive viewing. Or at least it would if Stone, as his own director, didn’t then proceed to shoot himself in the foot somewhat by using a Chloe Lamford set (think revolving Perspex box, antiseptic, elegant and not dissimilar to Es Devlin’s work on The Lehman Trilogy) that takes so long to change between scenes that energy, pace and connection are severely tested. Some of the gaps in onstage action are covered by an Arabic voiceover, simultaneously translated on a front cloth, which are the words of Sofiane’s dead Dad, trying to explain his absenteeism, selfishness and alcoholism. Interesting at first, that gets pretty repetitious and the audience is too often left sitting in pitch darkness then wondering what took so long when the curtain rises on new set pieces that don’t seem all that different from what we’ve just been looking at.

Tonally, the play is inconsistent, veering from social satire to arty drama to jet black comedy to blood-soaked melodrama, although it works perfectly well in each of those genres. If the observational comedy, and the examination of the gulf between people’s feelings and how they live out their lives, are the most successful aspects, the horrifying catharsis of the finale feels stuck in and slightly unearned, despite McTeer’s brilliance and the stark beauty of the stage picture, as though the author had suddenly remembered he was working from a piece of classic tragedy with its own plot trajectory.

All that said, there is a lot here to savour, primarily the performers. McTeer is magnificent: elegant, imperious, then vulnerable, very witty and then utterly disarmed at her own sexual reawakening. It’s hard to take your eyes off her, but Paul Chahidi and Akiya Henry match her superbly, with terrific comic flair edged with accurate underpinnings of real anxiety, as her husband and family friend respectively.

I also loved John MacMillan as her über-cool son-in-law, all tolerance and kindness until backed into an unacceptable corner, and Sirine Saba is haunting as the woman Sofiane left behind. Mackenzie Davis makes a potent impression as Helen’s disaffected daughter, although the character’s one-note moaning and ongoing self doubt get a little wearing. Bouab is a fascinating stage presence, even if the script doesn’t always give him the motivations to explain the character’s sometimes mystifying behaviour.

The fact that the entire thing takes place in a giant box, as though these people are part of an installation in some museum exhibition centred on how to totally fuck up your life, and the harsh mic-ing throughout (at no point does the dialogue sound remotely acoustic, despite the almost TV-like naturalism of the delivery), keeps the audience remote from the play and players. I assume that is a deliberate choice, but it is one that is likely to infuriate as many people as it delights. Stylistically, this very much feels like Yerma 2, but it’s a much less emotionally engaging experience, for all its theatrical panache and savage grandeur. For all that, Janet McTeer is unmissable, and so are several of her co-stars.

BUFF

by Ben Fensome

directed by Scott Le Crass

The Vaults, London – until 19 February 2023

https://vaultfestival.com/events/buff/

Director Scott Le Crass is becoming something of a specialist at staging flawless one person shows. His career-redefining revival of Martin Sherman’s solo masterpiece of Jewish history and survival, Rose starring an incandescent Maureen Lipman, transfers into the West End this spring and is on no account to be missed, and now with Ben Fensome’s highly entertaining Buff he comes up with another production rich in detail and dynamism but displaying total faith in the material and the central performer. Both entities here repay that trust abundantly.

Thematically, talking about body fascism on the gay scene is roughly akin to shooting fish in a barrel: we all know it’s there, most of us think it’s terrible, yet a surprisingly large number of allegedly intelligent people sadly buy into it. Similarly, with the bad manners and casual cruelty that can result from the consequence-free world of online dating, where everybody’s looking out for the next best thing and to hell with other people’s feelings, and the carefully curated online lives that get presented but frequently don’t match up with reality. Ben Fensome’s astute solo piece takes all this on board then digs deeper.

A full smorgasbord of gay issues, along with a fair amount of cracking humour, is filtered through the experiences of David O’Reilly’s newly single, plus-sized, early thirties London primary school teacher. This central character is a great role – authentically funny, eager to please, a little needy, too much in thrall to other people’s opinions, his wit masking an innate lack of self worth. The eyes linger just that little moment too long after making a quip or observation, the need to ingratiate, the body language is that of a person trying to disappear inside himself…it’s complex, entirely convincing, and performed with heartbreaking truth on a virtually bare stage, although when the acting is this accomplished you really don’t need decor.

O’Reilly, with his cherubic face, soulful eyes and the comedy timing of a true master, is an immensely appealing figure but he, and writer Fensome, don’t shy away from showing the less palatable aspects of the lead character’s personality when he finds his love unrequited and his life starting to fall apart. A nice touch by Fensome is making the unseen flatmate, the object of the lead character’s obsessive affection, sound like a pretty decent bloke and another victim of what people perceive from online perusing, except that in this case it’s that he’s not quite the arrogant gym-honed meathead he’s assumed to be.

If there’s a weakness in the writing, it’s that the switch from puppy dog to bitter bitch happens a little too abruptly and baldly, although O’Reilly’s sheer brilliance goes a long way towards masking the shortcomings. His breakdown is particularly impressively done, even as it’s painful to watch. The play lasts barely an hour though, and a little more fleshing out wouldn’t hurt. Still, this is impressive, timely, thought-provoking stuff, by turns screamingly fun then desperately sad. Well worth catching.

LEMONS LEMONS LEMONS LEMONS LEMONS

by Sam Steiner

directed by Josie Rourke

Harold Pinter Theatre, London – until 18 March 2023

https://www.haroldpintertheatre.co.uk/shows/lemons-lemons-lemons-lemons-lemons

When this revival of Sam Steiner’s much praised, internationally produced talk piece was first announced, eyebrows were raised at the astronomical ticket prices, especially given how short it is (originally advertised as seventy five minutes, although Josie Rourke’s glossy production is a bit longer than that) and that it only features two actors, even if, in this instance, they’re two of this country’s most bankable and appealing small screen stars. The charisma and star power of Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman aside, there’s not much else here that justifies selling a vital organ to get a good seat.

I didn’t see any of the earlier iterations of Lemons x5, but I suspect it probably works extremely well in a tiny studio space. Unfortunately, in the (comparatively) cavernous spaces of a traditional West End playhouse like the Pinter, it starts to look like pretty thin gruel dramatically speaking, and suffers badly in comparison to Nick Payne’s Constellations and Duncan MacMillan’s Lungs, the two plays it structurally bears most relation to. Neither is it as striking and exciting as Steiner’s own You Stupid Darkness!, a bleakly comic apocalyptic fantasia seen at Southwark just prior to the pandemic, and rather more worthy of revival.

Turner and Coleman play Oliver and Bernadette, a youngish couple -he’s a musician, she’s a lawyer- in an alternative universe where the British government has introduced a “hush law” whereby citizens are limited to using 140 words per day. It’s an interesting idea, up to a point, and the idea of the UK being run by draconian, uncaring elitists at least feels topical. Ideologically Oliver and Bernadette are not immediately on the same page -he’s violently opposed to the bill, she isn’t automatically- and the play examines the impact of that on their relationship, while also looking at the impact of language, and what happens when it is drastically controlled or even cancelled altogether.

The problem is though, that Steiner’s script, which jumps around chronologically to sometimes confusing effect, tends to provoke more questions than it answers. If words are so precious, why do the couple tend to waste so many of them when the pressure is on? We see them using morse code but why don’t they communicate in sign language? How are the powers-that-be monitoring how many words people are using in the privacy of their own homes? What happens to rule breakers? And was the last minute revelation of an infidelity supposed to be as eye-rollingly obvious as it comes across? These holes are probably less evident when the audience is right on top of the action, but unfortunately a larger space tends to make Lemons x5 feel more like a drama school exercise than a fully fledged play, despite stretches of pithy dialogue and situations that ring true.

Rourke’s production, performed on set designer Robert Jones’s black circular disc in front of a neon-edged cyclorama filled with all the detritus of modern domestic life, is punchy but irredeemably chilly in spite of the chemistry between the two stars. Turner has the better role and he invests Oliver with magnetism and real charm. The likeable Coleman is fine, but Bernadette just doesn’t feel that interesting, which I think is a fault of the writing rather than the actress.

It’s perfectly watchable – in fact Turner consistently ensures that it’s even more than that – and at this length, certainly doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. It just feels a bit, well, beige. The advertising tagline for this production is that it’s “a love story that leaves you speechless” and that’s possibly quite accurate: you may well be struck dumb by how little you get for your money.

SOUND OF THE UNDERGROUND

by Travis Alabanza

co-created and directed by Debbie Hannan

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 25 February 2023

https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/sound-of-the-underground/

The Royal Court’s first main stage production of 2023 is up and not so much running as sashaying magnificently….and it’s truly special. Travis Alabanza, in tandem with Debbie Hannan, has created something hilarious, furious, rough around the edges, and fiercely intelligent. It’s a gorgeous but thought-provoking celebration of queer performance art, a lament for the shrinking number of London venues where such work thrives, and a defiant two fingers up to the gatekeepers of both mainstream theatre and (hello RuPaul) glossy TV-primed drag.

It starts with a statement of intent, as the eight artists who make up the cast head for the stage from the back of the house, spreading a potent mixture of mayhem and joy, laced with a little bit of danger, then introduce themselves, and give a brief indication of what’s about to go down (“we are putting our nightlife jobs on hold to be at this theatre…we’ve made a play!”) Actually, Sound Of The Underground isn’t a play in the traditional sense of the word, but then nothing about it is traditional. Divided into three discrete sections, it first uses a sitcom set-up vaguely reminiscent of Jordan E Cooper’s recent, undeservedly short-lived Ain’t No Mo on Broadway, except that where that used drag to explore the Black American experience, here Alabanza uses a similar tone and sensibility to look at the realities of operating as an artist in a very particular, often underrated, medium.

This self-consciously arch scene indicts a certain globally famous drag icon before exploding in anarchy, then transitions into a section which employs the classic drag trope of lip synching, but here to a pre-recorded verbatim script, the words being the cast’s own as they discuss/decry the difficulties -financial, social and spiritual- of working on the underground club scene. If at first, it feels cacophonous and random, it quickly becomes utterly mesmerising. As if to underline the point that a drag career, so often trivialised and dismissed by outsiders who either don’t know or don’t care, is bloody hard work, Alabanza and Hannan have the performers and stage crew laboriously dismantle the set while at the back of the stage Liverpudlian diva Ms Sharon Le Grand is painstakingly bewigged, dressed and made up to perform an operatically OTT version of the Girls Aloud track that shares it’s title with this show, to close the first half. If it feels like a lot of preparation for minimum pay off, it’s also a useful metaphor for the careers of these unique talents.

There’s pay off aplenty though in the second half when each of the stars gets to demonstrate their particular skill set in an off-kilter, lushly produced variety show, compèred with disdainful wit by the gloriously named Sue Gives A Fuck, a languidly potty-mouthed glamazon who raises sarcasm to an art form. Some of the contributions, such as Lilly Snatchdragon’s fan dance or Sadie Sinner The Songbird’s burlesque striptease, are straight-forward crowdpleasers, while others – Rhys’ Piece’s rapping or Midgitte Bardot’s thrillingly sung, wildly hilarious ascent towards the Court’s flies on a cherrypicker – achieve a lunatic brilliance that catapults the show into the realm of the truly original.

This reaches an apotheosis with Wet Mess, an athletic drag king-cum-clown who combines cute with chilling to astonishing effect, whether making a stage entrance from within a tied up bin bag or performing a crazed yet oddly beautiful dance that feels equal parts exhilaration and threat. The final spot goes to Chiyo whose spotlight moment starts as a cheeky strip but then devolves into a harrowing monologue where he bares more than his body in a reminder that, once off stage, anybody who doesn’t conform to societal and gender-based norms can be at considerable risk just for living their authentic lives. It brings the production and the audience up short, and it’s undeniably powerful, even if there is a sense of preaching to the choir, although that is a criticism that could conceivably be levelled at the entire show, for all it’s barnstorming outrageousness and invention.

Ultimately though, kudos is due to the Royal Court for giving this fabulous shower of diverse and exciting talents such a prominent and sumptuously realised platform (Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting and the designs of Rosie Elnile and Max Johns are top notch), and it feels appropriate given that this is the venue that first gave birth to The Rocky Horror Show, albeit in the Upstairs space. Alabanza is a force of nature, and Sound Of The Underground will undoubtedly prove to be one of the theatrical events of 2023. Confrontational, bewitching and sometimes bewildering, it gets right to the heart of the punk sensibility of creative drag. You’re unlikely to have seen anything quite like this before, at least in a proscenium arch theatre, and you won’t forget it in a hurry.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

by Jill Hyem

Directed by Sally Hughes

The Mill at Sonning, Sonning Eye near Reading – until 11 March 2023

https://millatsonning.com

The delightfully picturesque Mill at Sonning offers comfort food both literally and theatrically in this converted 18th century flour mlll on a tiny island in the Thames, about half an hour by car outside Reading. After a very good buffet lunch or dinner, it’s a couple of steps into the semi-circular auditorium for a production that proves appropriate post-prandial entertainment for a well-heeled, predominantly silver-haired crowd. They’re not trying to reinvent the (water)wheel here, but it’s a formula that basically works.

Sonning is in an affluent commuter belt area, and Jill Hyem’s undemanding comedy, where the thought of retirement in a picture book cottage in Haslemere is the biggest trauma one of the principal characters has to face, is perfectly suited to this venue’s core audience. This is the sort of fare that might have run for years on Shaftesbury Avenue in the mid twentieth century and, despite references to Brexit and the internet, and the use of mobile phones, We’ll Always Have Paris feels like a throwback to that simpler era.

From the moment Elizabeth Elvin’s retired English headmistress Nancy arrives on Michael Holt’s attractive Parisian garret set unwrapping smelly fromages and whipping out baguettes and bottles of wine, it’s clear this is going to be a somewhat clichéd view of life in the French capital. That impression is further enhanced by the appearance of Charlot, Richard Keep’s ridiculously handsome, authentically accented odd job man, a Jean Dujardin lookalike with a sideline in serenading ‘Les dames anglais’ whilst accompanying himself on the guitar. Elvin and Keep have an easy, convincing rapport that transcends the slightly obvious nature of what they’ve been given to do.

Charlot enjoys an almost-romance with Natalie Ogle’s likeable Anna, newly widowed and in Paris to visit her friend, but it’s actually the friendship between the women, including potty-mouthed, cosmetically enhanced, sexually rampant Raquel (Debbie Arnold providing a welcome shot of raunch and glamour) that is the main point of Hyem’s script. In Sally Hughes’s nimble production, that aspect of the play lands extremely well: Elvin, Ogle and Arnold create a credible dynamic as a trio of privileged women who were once at school together but whose lives then took wildly differing paths.

Having established this relationship so well, it’s a shame that Hyem then slightly undermines her own, rather lovely, creation, by tying up Raquel’s storyline too neatly with an unlikely return to a rich former husband, a Vegas wedding and the suggestion she’s never going to see the other women again, thereby making one question the validity of these friendships in the first place. Ultimately though, We’ll Always Have Paris doesn’t need overthinking. There are moments when the script hints at darker undertows (for instance, Nancy’s distaste for Anna’s late husband or Charlot’s troubled relationship with Basienka Blake’s enjoyably monstrous Parisian landlady) and further exploration of those might make the play as a whole a little more tangy and tasty.

However, Hyem’s writing succeeds in capturing, quite beautifully, the slightly wistful yearning of us Brits (well, many of us Brits anyway) for the sheer elegance and joie de vivre of the City of Light. Dated and a bit safe this English take on a Boulevard Comedy may be, but Hughes’s classy staging and the nicely judged mood and performances will probably make you long to jump on the Eurostar. That said, as a brief escape from London, idyllic Sonning Eye will do just fine.